Welcome back to the SAIS Review’s The Looking Glass Podcast. We’re your hosts Aaryaman Shah and Jiwon Lim. On May 15, al-Qaeda affiliated militants claimed to kill 200 soldiers during an attack on an army base in Djibo, a village in northern Burkina Faso. This attack is emblematic of the extent to which violent extremism has found a foothold in the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid land straddling the Sahara and coastal West Africa. There are several reasons for the emergence and sustenance of this extremist violence, including free access to weapons, political instability and longstanding ethnic rivalries. Here to help us make sense of violence in the Sahel is Dr Alexander Thurston. 

Dr. Alexander Thurston is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati. He is a scholar whose work specializes in the intersection of Islam and politics. Dr. Thurston is the author of a blog, Sawahil, on issues across West Africa, MENA, Islam and Politics. His work has been featured in prominent academic journals, including Journal of the American Academy of Religion, African Affairs, Islamic Law & Society. He has also written reports and articles for the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and more. He is also the author of Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching, and Politics and Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement. I hope you enjoy this episode of the looking glass podcast. 

Hosts: Aaryaman Shah and Jiwon Lim

Produced by Jiwon Lim

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